


The Easy Way Out

by fiddle_on



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Comic Book Science, Engineering rules, Gen, alternate beginning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 08:45:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4013215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiddle_on/pseuds/fiddle_on
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Good engineering involves multiple fail-safes and solutions to a problem. Tony Stark is a fabulous engineer. </p><p>Here's what should have happened when Tony learned about the palladium poisoning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Easy Way Out

"Sir, I have the results of your most recent blood scans." 

"Hit me with it, Jarvis." 

Tony laid his head back on the couch where he was taking a break. He was exhausted, and moving seemed like too much trouble. The first month after the return from Afghanistan, he had been stressed, frenetic, and unable to sleep. In the month since then, he had still been stressed, but now he seemed to do nothing but sleep. For a chronic insomniac, this was worrying.

"It seems that the unusual tiredness you've been feeling is due to elevated levels of palladium in your bloodstream." 

The results popped up on the holoscreen. "What the fuck? The reactor should be containing the waste, and in any case, there shouldn't be enough to cause symptoms like this." Tony sat up to get a better look, and frowned. Any undergrad science student knew that heavy metals in body was bad news. Tony was way beyond college level, and even in that cave he had kept the metal poisoning risk in mind as he designed the reactor. He had known there was a slight chance some of the waste would enter his bloodstream, but it should have taken years, maybe decades to reach the point where he was feeling physical effects. Plenty of time to find a better solution, if he wasn't killed in the Ironman suit before it became an issue. "How did this happen, Jarvis?"

"You have been using the Ironman suit significantly more than was accounted for in the initial toxicity estimates, Sir, and use of the suit exponentially accelerates the rate of degradation in the palladium core. In addition, I have taken the liberty of running models of the interactions between the reactor and its housing, and it appears that when the reactor is stressed, the housing becomes permeable to the palladium, allowing it to enter your bloodstream. Partial permeability remains even after the stress is gone."

"So you're saying that I've been poisoning myself since the incident last month when the reactor blew."

"Since the incident with the fighter planes in Afghanistan, actually, Sir," JARVIS replied. "I'm afraid that regular use of the Ironman suit, especially in risky situations where you push its limits, is likely to result in additional stresses which will further increase the housing permeability."

"So. That's a pretty serious problem." Tony looked again at the numbers on his screen. "Possible solutions. We've got the obvious: an external power source and longer wires, but it's bad enough being the Energizer bunny with a battery in my chest. I'm not going to walk around like an old smoker with an oxygen tank. What sort of surgery would it take to fix the leak?"

"It would require removing and replacing the reactor housing with a novel material not affected by the reactor. It could not be done in house, and would require at least a weeklong stay in the hospital plus an additional one to three months of intensive physical therapy. The surgery itself would carry a significant risk of causing further damage to your chest."

Tony grimaced. He'd never liked hospitals, and after waking up with the arc reactor in the first place, he was feeling particularly paranoid about invasive medical procedures. "Well, let's see if we can't avoid that. Maybe look for other possible cores. You start modeling on that end. Start at the top of the periodic table, and work your way down. Include any combinations and alloys that have promising research behind them. Fuck, include any that have highly questionable research behind them. I'll look into a redesign that vents completely externally. It'll be uglier than the current design, and I'll have to come up with some way to keep from contaminating my clothes, but I bet I can come up with something I can live with. Maybe find a good lining for the housing while I'm at it." Tony moved to a workstation, and started pulling up schematics.

After two days of intensive lab time, Tony grinned at his new arc reactor. The new design would expel waste into an external catchment on the front of the reactor, as far from his body as possible. Which in this case meant a couple of centimeters, but hey, distance was distance. The catchment contained a filter that would hold onto the palladium waste, rather than letting it enter the bloodstream. He'd have to change out the filter once a week, plus every time he used the suit, but that alone would reduce the rate of poisoning by 80%. It would give him another four or five years before the palladium levels started causing symptoms again, and that was assuming he took no other measures, and came up with no more elegant solutions in the meantime. And he was Tony Stark. He'd have a better solution inside a month.

"Still no luck on the power source front, Jarvis?"

"I have tested every pure element and all the promising combinations, Sir. I am still running tests to compare all other possible combinations, but everything tested so far has proven to be both more toxic and less efficient than the palladium."

"Well, on the plus side the new design should seriously reduce the problem, so we've got time to look. Speaking of, I suppose I need to pop the new one in now." Tony looked it over one more time. He hated to put something in his body that he knew would kill him in just a few years, but since it was replacing a version that would kill him in months, he was willing to suck it up for now. He pulled up his shirt, twisted out the old model, and inserted the new one.

Tony took a drink of his chlorophyll shake and grimaced. Chlorophyll would help with the poisoning, and JARVIS had gotten Dummy to start making the shakes. But the taste... it was worse than cheap coffee. And he'd have to keep drinking them until he found a real solution to the palladium poisoning, not just the half-assed one of the new design. Time to start looking at lining materials. And a more efficient filter. And a solid backing for the housing, preferably something that could be inserted without removing wires. Pepper would threaten to quit again if he asked her to do it, plus the whole bit where she was neither a surgeon nor an engineer. She had almost killed him last time. Rhodey's hands were even bigger than Tony's, and there wasn't anyone else he trusted inside his chest. Maybe build a surgical bot for Jarvis? Actually, that one was a very good idea. Then he could really handle all his medical needs in house. Plus it could earn him a few million, if he sent it to R&D to make a human-controlled model for the medical market. 

Well, now that the palladium poisoning wasn't so urgent, he could pursue all these possibilities. Multiple solutions were alway good: it kept you from spending all your time chasing a dead end, like that alternate core seemed to be. Too bad about that. A non-poisonous core really would be the most elegant solution, but even if the science didn't allow that, the other solutions were all highly promising. But first, he'd go to bed, riding the high of the new reactor. He had time now.


End file.
